Vandals target gravestones in Northwood cemetery

NORTHWOOD — Numerous gravestones were found destroyed at a historic town cemetery after a recent vandalism spree.

Within the past several days, about a dozen gravestones at Canterbury Road Cemetery have been knocked down, moved, or broken into pieces, according to Cemetery Superintendent Sherm Elliott.

He said police are now investigating the vandalism after a report to police was made Tuesday.

“It’s a disgrace,” said Elliott. “It makes you cry to look at it.”

While the cemetery has been vandalized off and on for the past several years, there has been considerably more damage done in the past two or three weeks, said Elliott, who has been the cemetery superintendent for the past 40 years.

“This time it was so intense, it was so bad,” he said.

Most recently, a 10-foot-high monument to the Bartlett family, one of the earliest settlers in Northwood, was broken into three pieces, said Elliott.

He said the Canterbury Road Cemetery is one of the oldest ones in town, where many of the town’s early settlers are buried, including the parents of Gov. Albert Brown, who was governor of the state from 1921 to 1923. Elliott said the gravestone for Brown’s father’s third wife has also been knocked over during the recent vandalism streak, while the headstones for Brown’s parents are fortunately intact.

While the majority of the recently vandalized gravestones were broken into pieces, others were either knocked down or moved to a different location at the cemetery. Elliott said he and the cemetery trustees had to use a catalog to ensure that the headstones were located on the appropriate plot of land.

Over the past several years, Canterbury Road Cemetery has seen 50 to 60 gravestones damaged from vandalism, said Elliott. He said while police conduct patrols on the dirt road at the cemetery, for a small town it would be difficult to have a police presence there at all times.

In Elliott’s recent memory, Tuesday was the first time police were asked to get involved in investigating vandalism at the cemetery.

While the town has several other cemeteries, Elliott said they don’t get nearly as much vandalism as Canterbury Road Cemetery does.

“We got to find who is responsible for this and do something about it,” said Elliott.